The increasing human population will require higher yields of food, feed, and fiber from crop plants on decreasing amounts of arable land. Several types of insects and nematodes are known to reduce yield of crops produced from plants. Plant pests damage plant parts, including roots, developing flower buds, flowers, leaves, stems, and seeds, which leads to lower yields.
Traditional approaches for controlling plant pests have used chemical control agents and construction of inter-specific hybrids between crops and their wild-type relatives as sources of resistant germplasm. Chemical pest control agents, although effective, have several disadvantages. Many chemical control agents are expensive to manufacture, and are characterized as pollutants because they persist in the environment as a result of their resistance to microbial degradation. Chemical control agents require on-farm formulation, which increases the safety risk to the farmer due to the exposure to chemical agent formulations. The chemical agent formulations have to be applied at least once and often, more than once per growing season, increasing the carbon footprint related to these compositions. Methods and compositions employing plant biotechnology pest control agents are also effective means for controlling plant pests, for instance through plant expression of one or more pest control agents that are generally selectively toxic to a particular target pest when ingested by the pest. Unlike chemical agents, biotech approaches have been demonstrated to be environmentally friendly, have no known safety risks when used by farmers, and are economical in terms of carbon footprint impact and ease of use for deployment by the farmer. However, there are only a few examples of such biotech compositions and methods for controlling such pests, and even fewer if any examples of any biotechnology approaches that have demonstrated efficacy in controlling plant pathogenic nematodes. Thus, there is a need for new compositions and methods for protecting plants from such pest infestation, generally for the purpose of maintaining and enhancing yields of crops produced from such plants, and for sustaining and providing food, feed and fiber for the increasing human population.